GFAJ-1

Last week, Felisa Wolfe-Simon et al. published on GFAJ-1, a bacterium she discovered in California’s Mono Lake. Whereas life as we knew it uses carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur to sustain itself, GFAJ-1 seems to dig arsenic. In fact, GFAJ-1 might even be able to use arsenic in building cellular structures like DNA. … Continue reading →